Critical Essay by Desmond Pacey

In the following excerpt, Pacey discusses the evolution of Yeats's allusions to children from those of a Romantic modified by touches of "irony" and "humour" to those of a realist who recognized that children are not ideal creatures but are in fact human beings with bad as well as good traits.

Yeats' multiplicity of powerful poems about sexual love, old age, and Irish society has distracted attention from his poetic treatment of children. Apart from a number of articles and essays on "Among Schoolchildren", the subject remains literally unexplored. And yet four of Yeats' finest poems—"A Prayer for My Son", "A Prayer for My Daughter", and "The Dolls", and especially "Among Schoolchildren" (which many readers consider his greatest single poem)—are...